Breathe easy! BEST workers shelve strike plan

BEST workers, who had threatened a strike from Thursday midnight over non-payment of salaries, have dropped the plan.

Sources say the proposed strike was called off after the civic administration paid half the May 2017 salaries earlier this week.

The BEST Undertaking, which has been running into losses for the last few years, has been unable to pay its 42000 employees on time since February 2017. The BEST Workers' Union had alleged that the civic administration had not been following the industrial court's orders regarding payment of salaries. However, the BEST Undertaking has now promised to pay the workers by Thursday. Union president Shashank Rao has said that since the salaries were the only contentious issue, the strike plan has now been shelved.